Managing a company in the food and beverage industry is a fascinating task.
Food and beverage products are so deeply rooted in the culture of most countries that making and selling them is not only a matter of making and selling good and tasty products, but products that nurture people's body, soul, and heart. Given this, it's not difficult to see that the task quickly becomes complex.
The objective of this course is twofold: first, we will focus on contemporary challenges that managers and entrepreneurs in food and beverage businesses should be able to face; and second, we will provide models and tools to design and implement appropriate courses of action to satisfy customers and build an advantage over the competition.
This course is made up of four modules and an introduction, each exploring one dilemma that food and beverage companies face. You will be presented with a set of video lectures and guest speakers. These lectures combine an accessible introduction to specific topics integrated with interviews of managers and experts that will give precious insights and examples to the participants.
To enhance your learning experience with us, we will make a Documentary on the Excellences of the Modena District available for you, which is in a format that we have developed specifically for this course in order to give you the chance to experience first-hand the territory as our on-campus students usually do.
Each module is paired with an evaluated quiz and weekly discussion forums to reflect on the variety of the F&B world, its complexity, and the power of the network that we will build together during the course.
Successful completion of the quizzes is required for a course certificate as explained in the Grading Policy.
Below the guest speakers of the course:
Masterchef Italia Sky – Nils Hartmann, Head of Movie Channels at Sky Italia – www.masterchef.sky.it
Eataly - Paolo Bongiovanni, Marketing Director Italy – www.eataly.net
Berlucchi – Paolo Ziliani, Owner – www.berlucchi.it
Joia Restaurant – Alta Cucina Naturale – Pietro Leemann, Owner and Chef – www.joia.it
Branca – Nicolò Branca, Owner – www.branca.it
Barilla – Giuseppe Morici, President Region Europe – www.barilla.com
Proyecto Expo 2015 Chile – Guillermo Ariztia, Chile Pavillon Director – www.expomilan.cl
Winery Il Cavallante, Milano – Sergio Morpurgo, Owner
Heineken – Floris Cobelens, Marketing Director – www.heineken.com
TRDN – Martin Oetting, Managing Director – www.trnd.com
GROM – Federico Grom, Owner and Founder – www.grom.it/en
Tetra Pak – Matthew Hatton, Director Competitor Intelligence – www.tetrapak.com
BioHombre – Matteo Panini, CEO – www.hombre.it
Acetaia Maletti – Carmen & Claudio Maletti
Cantine Riunite & CIV – Vanni Lusetti, CEO; Francesca Benini, Sales & Marketing Manager; Elena Lottici, Export Manager; Mario Vandi, Brand Manager – www.riunite.it
GlemGas – Marco Guerzoni, Program Product Manager – www.glemgas.com
Bibendum Catering – LaFranceschetta58 – Sabrina Lazzereschi & Marta Pulini, Owners and Founders – www.bibendumcatering.it , www.franceschetta58.it
DISCLAIMER - Since most of the videos are conducted with those whose native language is not English, we have decided to sometimes preserve their more emphatic speech to keep a tighter match between the audio and the subtitles.

Taught By

Gabriele Troilo

Associate Professor

Transcript

One characteristic of food and beverage products make them more complicated to be managed compared to other kinds of products. They are usually considered as experience products. What does that mean? In economics, there is the traditional way of distinguishing products in terms of experience products, search products, and credence products; what is the difference? Experience products and services are those for which consumers find it difficult to get an impression of the quality before trying them services are those for which consumers find it difficult to get an impression of the quality before trying them without an experience. On the contrary, search products are products for which consumers can get a feeling of their quality by searching for a specific kind of information. Credence products are products also after they've been bought and consumed, it’s very difficult to assess their quality and so it's a matter of credence that's why they are called credence products. Most food and beverage products are experience products. Consumers find it difficult to have an idea of their quality before trying and/or consuming them. What is the effect of this experientiality feature on the management of these products? There are two main effects that are the most important ones. First of all, it is very important for consumers to try to product. The trial is very important. From the company’s point of view, it should be able to make and let consumers try the product. On the other side, since the quality is difficult to understand before having bought and consumed the product, it means that the reputation of the actors operating in the market is very important. Let me give you an example. If you have to buy a washing machine, it's relatively easier to have an idea of the quality of the washing machine. Why? Because there are some features which distinguish a better washing machine from relatively worse washing machine, and these are technical characteristics. For example, with a washing machine, it can be the size, it can be the water consumption, it can be the price, and so if you search for information for this piece of information before going into the market, into the shop and buying the product you can know the quality of the product, and so that's why they are search products. What about a bottle of wine? What about a restaurant? It's difficult to understand the quality and to compare the quality of one wine to another before trying it. The same is for a restaurant. How can you say if a restaurant will be better than another before trying it? What happens is that the reputation of the actors is very important, and the reason is that consumers and business customers, when they cannot rely on anticipated characteristics related to quality, they rely on the so called quality clues. What does it mean? That they try to understand what is the importance of some features of the product which they perceive correlated to quality. One easy example is the price. For many consumers the higher the price is, the higher the quality is. I cannot assess the quality, but if I know that the product is more expensive then another I can presume or suppose that the quality of the more expensive product is higher than the quality of the less expensive product. This doesn't mean that it is true, but it is what consumers perceive and consumers base all their decisions on what they perceive and what they know from their own point of view. What are the typical quality clues which are relevant to a food and beverage business? First we said the price, then we said the reputation of the actor is important. For example, the brand knowledge, the brand is very important because, to the brand, a consumer associates some characteristics which to them mean quality, or the reputation of the company making the product. Not only the brand under which the product is named but reputation of the main actor which is the company making the product; or the image of the shop where the product is sold. There are many different quality clues linked to reputation, but on the other side, other quality clues can be due to, for example, awards. Award winning products are considered better products than products which have no awards are never won an award; or reviews by critics, by experts, by other consumers. The point is that consumers try to anticipate the quality they can get from a product, not from some technical characteristics The point is that consumers try to anticipate the quality they can get from a product, not from some technical characteristics but from other characteristics which they correlate to the quality. These are called quality clues. The final point here is that, again, many companies tend to overestimate the competence that consumers have related to food and beverage products and services. Companies tend to overestimate the rate of expertise that consumers have. They tend to think that many consumers are connoisseurs, but actually this is not the case. Trying to distinguish consumers in terms of their expertise, we can use two very important concepts. The first the first is called familiarity and the second is expertise. What does familiarity mean? Familiarity is literally the number of interactions that consumers have with a product or service. Familiarity is different from expertise, expertise has to do with knowledge: What do consumers know about the product? How deep is the knowledge? How broad is the knowledge? There is a difference between familiarity and expertise. Most consumers are familiar with products and brands, that is to say, they interact frequently because they buy the products and/or brands frequently but actually there are many consumers who frequently drink wine by their knowledge of wine is not so deep, it’s not so broad, and that distinguishes these consumers from expert consumers. Expert consumers are consumers who are characterized by expertise, that is to say, deep and broad knowledge of products and brands. So these consumers for example when talking about wine, have the knowledge about the different areas where wines are made, or they know the difference among wines according to their denomination of origin. Maybe they're able to distinguish wines according to the grapes, according to the way the wine is made. There are many different characteristics that make the knowledge of a wine for consumers. Many consumers have relatively limited knowledge, so they are very familiar but they are not so expert. This is important to understand for companies because if most consumers are familiar but they do not have a deep and broad knowledge they try to rely on quality clues for companies it’s very important to know what the quality clues are? What are the characteristics that consumers correlate to quality that can be influenced in order to make consumers aware of the quality of the product or brand.

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